Lawmakers Punt Again on Patriot Act Reform

It’s Groundhog Day again, at least insofar as Patriot Act reform is concerned.

Despite repeated promises, federal lawmakers are again punting on revising the controversial spy act adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Congress is set to extend three expiring Patriot Act spy provisions for four years, without debate. They were set to expire at month’s end.

Here are the three provisions at issue:

• The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court (under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.

• The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for any reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.

• The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.

The expiring measures originally were set to sunset in December 2009. Congress extended the deadline until the end of February 2010 in a bid to work out compromise legislation. When that failed, lawmakers punted for a year. Then in February of this year, Congress declared that those measures would expire at the end of this month unless new action was taken.

Now lawmakers are taking the long view, and extending the provisions to June 1, 2015.

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